Did you, ever, really…
Warm.
Cold.
Senses.
I must grant the expression of all I have come to be. Why?
Who will hear? Who will care?
Burn. Patience. Believe. faith. Love. Care. Transcend.
My name?? Does anyone ask? Or Care? Or wonder?
Sleep. Call. Know. Believe. Long. Ache.
Tender… For a moment. I may have known.
God. Heal. Please. Please. Please….
If not….
Suffer. Pretend. Marry. Children. Whatever.
Die.
Truth.
Fade…
Hope.
After all is said…
Imagine, for just a moment, that you could have whatever in life that you really, really want. Imagine, if at all possible, that there are no limitations to having what you want in the deepest, most protected spaces of your heart and that it’s now yours. Here and now. Imagine that you could have and embrace, call your own, to keep close and yet still release and realize all that you have ever wanted. Do you see it? Do you feel it? Can you embrace that vision? Can you know, without a doubt that it belongs to you in all the ways that you have dreamed and imagined it to be?
For me, it has been a very simple want… a dream, if you will.
See me. Know me. Love me. Take all of me in your arms and embrace me for all I am and what I have become. Set aside, if only for a moment, that which you have called your want and need, to see me as I am. do not look away from my faults but rather, if only for that moment, open your arms and welcome me to a haven that has been dreamed of.
In my dreams, I can hear your laughter. In my dreams, I can see your smile. In my dreams, I know that you will weep along with me, caress me with a tenderness never known, with a love only imagined. In my dreams, you will see how truly frail I am. In my dreams, you know that I have spent a lifetime learning to keep my pains and tears to myself. In my dreams, you are the one that will risk everything you are, to know all that I am.
After all is said and done, I only want to love. After all is said and done, I only want to love, you.
After all is said, if there is no love, there is no life.
After all is said, if you love me…
After all is said, I will give my all.
To Whom Do I Apologize…
Over the years, in all of my experiences, I have met and believed that I loved, many. In my stumbles, in my errors, in my attempts to understand and embrace who I am as a person, I have injured others.
Perhaps an apology at this stage of our lives will mean nothing, or if it does, it may not bear the burden required to release and free either of us from the damage done. So if I were to ask, to inquire in the gentlest of fashions of those that I believe I have injured, the question would still remain; how do I apologize.
Words seem so terribly insufficient and whatever tribute I could pay in an attempt to repair the relationship would seem far less worthy of the intention. Do I merely say, “I’m sorry”? And even if “sorry” were to somehow be accepted, there is still the challenge, at least for me, of finding a truthful way of defining the damage done.
So I believe that it would resemble this…
“I am so sorry that I didn’t know how to love you. I am so very sorry that I was so lost in my own pain that I was unaware of your needs. In every thing that I wanted to be, I was unable to embrace your beauty because I couldn’t see it. Lord knows that I wanted to, that I really did all I was capable of doing to look beyond myself, to reach further than my fear said that I could. But I failed.
I have no defense. I offer no excuse. And in the years that have passed, I wonder if I have even the right to ask for your forgiveness. If the very idea of repentance is an affront to the very person that you are, that you have grown to be.
To whom do I apologize? To you? Or to God…
I am sorry… Will you forgive me?”
I do, love….
Love is all that matters…
Love is really all that matters… In all ways, in all things, in all times.
An Open Letter To God…
Someday, I would like to meet a woman (not many, not “other”, but one woman, just one and only one) that sees me and just knows that I am the one. She sees me and knows, without question or doubt, that no matter my financial or physical circumstances, that I am still a man that has drive and desires that do not include using her, or treating her as if she owes me something. That in return for her fidelity, I will give myself wholly and completely to first, You God and second, myself (to be a worthy Head Of Household) and at the same time as I recognize my True self in Christ, that I acknowledge that I am her one, her mate and that I submit to her out of loyalty and respect for her stature as my mate. My partner. My rib. My One, as in “one flesh”.
She will be a woman that sees her femininity and her womanhood as a tribute to God and as a means of expressing her desire and willingness to submit to the One man that she is destined and created for. That submission is a gift to to each other, and that it is cherished and adored, respected and kept sacred because that is how it should be. She knows that her husband, her man, is owned by her in all ways and that in her giving, she receives. She knows that he gives himself to and for her because he has nothing to hide. He is man of truth and integrity. That his strength is within their marriage and the blessing of God. She cooks and cleans, or sits and watches him (me) do so because she wants to, not because she has to! When her man falls, she rushes to help him UP, not talks trash and criticizes and reminds him of his faults; he already knows. She knows that when she falls, he will run, walk, jog, crawl, drive, hike, sail, fly, ride a bike to ensure that she is safe; for all she had to do was love him with kindness and tenderness.
God, I want a woman that will laugh with me, not at me. A woman that sees my pain and cares. A woman that sees me cry and thinks, “he is my mate and he hurts, what can I do to ease his pain” instead thinking me a punk or loser. And that when other men flirt and desire her, she can smile easily and with tenderness knowing that her love and mate awaits her at home. Her home. His home. Their home.
In return, she never has to wonder where I am, because I will call without her having to ask. In return, when we are apart, she can call, email whenever she wants and know that I do not place any ANY limits on her acts. She will know that I call out of respect for she and I. She will know that if I am out of town, I get a single room, leave when it’s done and come straight home. She will know that there is no sporting event ever created better than her sitting on my lap and taking possession of her man. She will know that any woman that attempts to lure me will fail AND that her man (me) will NEVER withhold that information, because she also knows that I would never create the environment for infidelity to exist.
She will, as I do, believe in opening doors for women, and that this is not a matter of superiority, but in serving and wanting to please. We shall hold hands because our love is an expression and touch is a physical manifestation of that love. That when I, am show and express tenderness and warmth with all that I am that I merely sharing all that I have grown to be, that this is who I am, that I am not ashamed. And Father, I believe. I do, that she exists.
Dear God, where is the chivalry or has this merely been a longing of something that is dead and gone? Where is the desire and longing of a woman for a man that holds close the older, perhaps no longer popular, desires and rigors of courting? In all of this, where has the emotional creativity and openness, the ache and longing, the true need to know a person deep down in their soul, in their heart… their spirit? What of communication, the willingness to truly listen, to hear with the heart and not just the ears? To communicate with mind, body and soul, with respect and decency, the needs and wants that we carry in each of us? Have all been so hurt, disappointed and wounded to the point that we can no longer expose and express the wonder of love in our hearts; love that You gave us? Is there any way to stand emotionally naked before her and still know her love? It seems that e seek and long for love, and yet have not defined it to the point of knowing its true worth.
Finally, she knows that she is safe with me. That her emotions matter; that she matters in every way. That her need to be a woman and her desire to be held is not a shortcoming, but a rejoicing of all things that make her a woman and me a man! If she ever finds that she needs me and I am absent, I will not say “okay, baby, I’m in a meeting, let me call you back” INSTEAD she will know that she will hear, “Okay, give me a sec to get out of here and then tell me what YOU need….”
Father, You know my heart and You know that I am a good man….
Please bless me with a woman of external and internal beauty that would walk through hell to have me. Knowing that when she had to, she wouldn’t need to….
I will accept nothing less than my dream ’cause You said that I didn’t have to…..
Your son,
C
Without Thinking…
I looked back over my life to the moments when I thought that I was in love, to the time when I even spoke the words. I search my own heart today and reflect on the person that I was then. I realize, perhaps painfully so, that looking back on the “then” me to the “now” me, that I was truly an unpleasant person. I would use much stronger language to describe myself then, but this is a “PG” post.
I was thinking about all of this and it dawned on me that if I tried to follow the 12 step idea of making ammends, I could conceiveably spend the rest of my natural life (given 120 years) trying to find them, explain to them, apologize to them for the crap that I did then. I will however, say this, I was an ass. I just wasn’t able to see it or hear it from another.
So when one desires a woman with a wonderful heart, a gentle spirit and love to last for all eternity but is too screwed up to know how to recognize her when she is there, what is one to do? Be there no games, just a direct and honest spirit. something that I lacked, something that I didn’t even know was a part of the human experience means that I missed out on the beauty of so many people.
Patience. Kindness. Tenderness. These are the things that she offered. Those are things that I missed in her. The beauty in her that I couldn’t see. But had I known then, what I know now, I would have said that, “I will spend the rest of my life thanking you in deed and word for the love that you have given me….”
And yet, is it so hard to be honest in ones intentions, to give oneself without hidden agendas? If it is love that you seek, then let it be, or so they, those that preached the grander purposes of humnaity would have me believe. And yet if not, then thats okay too; just not for me to even know how to imagine the perfection of failure in love should be enough….
The question of the meaning of life is answered silently in a smile, in the sound of my name across those ips, in the gentleness of an unspoken touch; and in all things, I know, without a doubt, that I am loved without expectation or condition.
It is this that I yearn to know. In all ways.
Each day of my life.
Can breath truly be stolen in a single kiss? Within a gentle touch, can volumes of emotions be expressed? What is the depth of a man whos heart beckons to only one that may hear my plea….
If, in visions and dreams she dances with angels, why then can I not touch? If, as I slumber her voice calls, what then of those moments when I search?
“That which God has joined together..”
How has God dressed you this venture? From glorious moment came your birth? Alas, has your heart called? Yes, a thousand time yes. I dont want to continue, with hands empty, with armor abreast, without you another moment. But I will wait. I will wait through eternity and through and yet another still, if that promise, your kiss, shall await me thus. Find me, beloved, find me.
Let me once again kneel before and say, as only you will know; that I alone, have known no other. For this heart has, and is, yours.
Thank you for loving me.
I am Blessed. And I await your presence…
Moments to live by….
Being loved…
“I will spend the rest of my life thanking you in deed and word, if you will have me….” C. Murphy, Jr., 1995
Looking back at those moments when I really thought myself to be in love. I know now that being “in love” is less about “being” and all about giving.
Just some random thoughts…
Just love me…
I will be called to task. To be somber. Or sexy. Or cute. Or responsive.
But I am, me.
I am not cute. Or sexy. Or the facade of my past. I am just me.
Do we hear the voice of love when it calls? Whispers?
I am the picture painted on the canvas of my imagination. Evolving.
Where once I was the black man that is only good for a late night visit, a shell of the man that I longed to be. I have visited myself and have grown beyond those moments. That emptiness.
I was that man women marry and divorce, for I lacked the state of grace that is to love, the want and need, of those that sought to be, just and alive.
I can pretend to be someone other than who I am, but those needs, those darker moments have faded and passed.
I will still seek love…to never again deny that I want to own and be owned by, love.
I will ache, to just be loved and to love with the passion and grandeur of my Maker.
When I have, once again, held love in my arms, I shall never again let it go.
Let us just, love. For all we are worth and long to be.